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Volume 5 Trouble File First Half Part 8

「Z z z z z z z z z z. . . . z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z . . .  *Snore*. . .  」

「Hey, I might have let it slide in Kasukabe’s case, but you are not getting away that easily, Miss Rich Lady!」

「. . . . . .. sho shleepy. . . .  . z z z z z z z z z z z z z . . . 」

「Ugh, fine, you can stay there, but I will be charging you for it later, and do not dare thinking that I am going to forget about it!」

「G A H A H A H A H A H A H A H A! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! I can tell just from watching you guys that you are getting along with each other like no one else in the world. It feels like I am watching us Seven Great Sages back in the good old days!」

. . . . And so, the banquets and the feasts continued until well after the moon rose up into the night sky.

In the end, it can be said that The Seven Great Sages War that Shuten Douji talked about, a great conflict between The Seven Great Sages and the Jade Emperor and Taoism, Sendo and Buddism was all about the dignity of the 「non-humans」. When he finally finished recalling their tale, Shuten Douji, who served as the Storyteller of The Seven Great Sages was rewarded with a round of thunderous applause, and everyone who was still sober enough to stand still begun to look at him with admiration in their eyes.

Born as a Half Celestial Star Spirit with enormous power and Divinity, but without a defined purpose, Sun Wukong lived her life half-heartedly because she could not be classified as a human, monster or a God. Even though her talents and potential have been noticed by the Jade Emperor himself, he ultimately tried to kill her because he was afraid that she would become a threat to his heavenly rule and the order of the entire world. But even if she were to be confined and kept in a bird cage for the rest of her life, there were still people, gods and demons out there who genuinely worshipped and admired her way of life.

When he failed to make Sun Wukong kneel before him, thus showing that he is unable to control her, that was the moment when The Jade Emperor designated her as a threat that needed to be subdued an then swiftly eliminated. Because if one such Half Celestial Star Spirit started baring her fangs against him, then there would surely be others who would try to do the exact same thing, and that was the possibility that he could not allow to pass at any cost. Even though Sun Wukong was beautiful and undoubtedly talented, she needed to disappear if The Jade Emperor wanted his absolute rule over the heavenly realm to continue undisturbed. In order to achieve that goal, he tried various things, and when he saw that threats and light punishments were not enough to force her to change her ways, he decided that more drastic methods needed to be undertaken, and so he and his many aides and servants tried repeatedly to capture her, strip her of her Divinity and power and even go as far as to seal her under the entire mountain that they have dropped down on her with Buddha’s aid.

And so, there they had it, the reason behind The Seven Great Sages War finally revealed. As it turns out, all of the theories about the War’s origins turned out to be at least partially correct, because when you get down to it, The Seven Great Sages who swore a blood oath with Sun Wukong rebelled not only against the injustice directed at Sun Wukong herself, but they have done so to ensure that no other non-human creature that was born with power or talent that could have been perceived as a threat by The Jade Emperor and then persecuted because of it would have to go through the same thing that their leader went through.
「But you know what, old man? Now that I have heard about it all from you personally, it turned out to be way more than I was initially expecting. Maybe you should talk about your version of the story more often, so that more people would realize what really happened? Because the way tings are now, it seems like a kind of a waste to me, honestly.」

「Perhaps it is, but that is just how it is with those kinds of stories. They are always talked about one-sidedly, but is that not exactly what makes them so interesting in the first place? G A H A H A H A H A! ! ! !」

Shuten Douji laughed and drank another cup of sake, and then he reached for yet another barrel of it and opened it up with a wide grin.

「Fufun, Gods also have a hand in deciding which folklore is the good and the bad one without the permission of those involved in it because they think that they have the exclusive right to do and say whatever they want, but the truth is that it is up to the listener and their heart to decide what they want to believe in.」

「You really think so?」

「Yes, I really think so. But you know. . . . .. 」

Placing his cup of sake, which he emptied up in one gulp, on the table in front of him, Shuten Douji had a look in his eyes that seemed to be indicating that even though he looked like he was looking at something in front of him, in truth he was looking at something that was much more distant than anything around him.

「Even though none of The Seven Great Sages regret starting The Seven Great Sages War. . . then there were way too many dead who laid down their lives for our cause, and no amount of glorifying or sugarcoating is going to change that.」

「. . . .  .」

Izayoi did not know any words he could say to that, so he simply stayed silent and took another sip of sake from his cup.

「The declaration of the war made by Sun Wukong might have sounded like something ambitious, but the truth is that from the moment that entire thing started we were all aware that we were pretty much set up to lose it from the very beginning. If that was nothing else but what we intended it to be: a conflict between just the two groups of people, then the casualties could have been contained to the necessary minimum, but before we even noticed, the conflict has escalated into something that was blown way out of proportion, and all of that was the Jade Emperor’s fault, because he turned all of the Gods of the entire east Asia against us, so as you can probably imagine, it quickly developed into a hopeless struggle where we could not have done anything to win, not that we ever cared about winning or losing. After all, the seven of us did not start that battle to see who would be the victor and who would be the loser, but to protect our own dignity along with the dignities of all who were similar to us. We know that we were fighting a losing battle, and we have long since accepted that. . . .